Tamiko Thiel

Tamiko Thiel was awarded the 2018 SAT Montreal Visionary Pioneer Award for now over 35 years of politically and socially critical media artworks exploring place, space, the body and cultural identity. She began her career as lead project design engineer of Danny Hillis‘ Connection Machine CM1/CM2 artificial intelligence supercomputers from 1986 & 1987, which she got into the collection of MoMA NY 30 years later. She began working with virtual reality (VR) as producer & creative director on Starbright World, the first metaverse for children, in collaboration with Steven Spielberg. Her own VR large projection installation Beyond Manzanar was the first VR artwork acquired by a US art museum when it was bought in 2002 by the San Jose Museum of Art. She began working in augmented reality (AR) art as part of the pathbreaking AR intervention into MoMA NY „We AR in MoMA“ in 2010. Her AR art commissions include Unexpected Growth in 2018 for the Whitney Museum New York (now in the collection), ReWildAR for the Smithsonian Institution’s 175th anniversary in 2021, and Waldwandel/Forest Flux for the Kunsthalle Munich exhibit „Flowers Forever.“